Knight in tarnished armour faces defeat in his final joust

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They bank with him, buy his papers, cheer his team, but now voters are set to cut their losses with a billionaire leader who built an empire but divided the land

ON THE edge of Milan is the city that Silvio built. Far from the grit and grime of Italy’s northern commercial capital, it is an oasis of calm, an exclusive enclave of terracotta flats with sports complex, swimming pool and tinkling fountains.

This large private suburb, constructed in the 1970s and now home to 10,000 Milanese, was the first building block of Silvio Berlusconi’s empire. With typical braggadocio, the young entrepreneur called it “Milano 2”. Imagine a developer calling his pet housing project Manchester 2 and you get a sense of Signor Berlusconi’s limitless self-belief.